Microsoft Word
is the world's most popular word processor. There are some good alternatives to Word (not least the free OpenOffice Write 
) but I'd be surprised to find a school that didn't rely on it as teachers and technicians alike are used to the program and haven't really got time to learn alternatives.
Besides, Microsoft Word offers great flexibility in the appearance of document text and its own menus and is completely accessible via the keyboard. It also contains some useful features for people with specific learning difficulties such as Outline mode and Autocorrect & AutoText.
New tutorials: Find out about spellchecking in Word and the dictionary feature.
Microsoft Word lets you make a large array of alterations to your document text in order to improve visual accessibility.
Fields are great for creating on-computer worksheets and cloze procedure activities.
Ever found that when you type into Word you start replacing letters that you have already written? This is word's Overtype Mode.
Reducing Word's visual complexity can have huge benefits on a pupil's confidence.
Using Styles you can get round Word's quirky problems such as sudden change of font. It also eliminates the need to change formatting every time a pupil starts Word.
With the more recent versions of Word it has become possible to use the keyboard arrow keys to select options from Word's toolbar.
Microsoft Word's ability to create new shortcut keys is exceptionally useful for people who struggle to use the mouse. This example takes you through the easy process of reducing a seven-stage keyboard procedure to a single keyboard combination.
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